OpenAI Hits Back at Apple, Slams Company’s “Sloppy” Exit Policies

Following Apple’s presentation of legal filings claiming a former engineer used stolen circuit blueprints to train AI models at OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker has struck back with a brutal public and legal rebuttal.

According to a Reuters report, brand-new court filing submitted to the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, show that OpenAI has completely denied allegations of corporate espionage. Instead, OpenAI has told the judge that Apple has nobody to blame but itself for the confusion surrounding corporate data.

“This dispute is a mess of Apple’s own making, and it is trying to blame everyone else,” OpenAI stated directly in the filing. Rather than addressing every piece of forensic computer evidence line by line, OpenAI focused its defense on Apple’s internal corporate habits and offboarding practices.

According to OpenAI, Apple actively encourages its engineers to use personal iCloud accounts to handle work files. OpenAI argues this policy creates a nightmare scenario when workers leave the company, making it nearly impossible for departing engineers to separate their personal photos and documents from official Apple data.

Furthermore, OpenAI slammed Apple’s standard policy of immediately escorting departing employees off campus. OpenAI claims that rushing workers off the premises leaves them with almost no time to return company-owned hardware, hand over active responsibilities, or transfer work files back to internal servers.

Former Apple engineer Chang Liu, who is named as a main defendant alongside former Apple hardware chief Tang Tan, provided his own explanation in the court papers. Liu stated that any access he had to Apple files after leaving the iPhone maker was done purely to help his former co-workers. He claimed that Apple staff repeatedly reached out to him after he joined OpenAI, asking for help locating files and answering technical questions about his past projects.

Meanwhile, Tan stated that he returned all official Apple prototypes before his departure and only kept basic, non-confidential materials like a standard exit checklist.

OpenAI’s strategy shifts the burden back onto Apple. Under trade secret law, a company can only claim information is a protected “trade secret” if it took reasonable and strict measures to secure it in the first place. By highlighting Apple’s iCloud habits and hasty exit protocols, OpenAI is trying to convince the judge that Apple failed to protect its own data.